Wednesday, June 06, 2012

We have officially hit the two month mark. Could it be that it’s only been 8 weeks? The agony of the adoption process feels like it was forever ago. Interestingly my annual physical revealed that my blood pressure level dropped from 130 to 120. The stress of adoption process is no joke. I literally can’t express how nice it is to be on this side. He’s home, he’s home! Hip hip hooray!

Forming – storming – norming. Those are the three steps of group change. During the forming stage, everyone is happy and all is well in the world. The next stage, storming, occurs when people stop being nice and start being real – oh wait – was that tag line from “The Real World” – MTV’s reality show? Once you get past the ugly storming stage, you hit “norming” – where everyone figures out how to live together, preferably peaceably.

I am not sure if we’re still at the forming stage or if we’ve gone through a mini-storming and have reached norming. People tell me it takes about 5-6 months for everyone to reach norming. We haven’t had much storming – I think the kids are all “adjusting” – but I wouldn’t call it a full blown storm.

B is doing amazingly well. He is happy and loving. We continue to feel completely blessed to have him in our lives. That’s not to say that there haven’t been tears – but they are expected…and probably a healthy part of this process. Overall, he is smiling, funny, and goofy and fits in perfectly with the other three maniacs we call our children. He also fits in perfectly with his four wacky cousins. While I hesitate to paint too rosy of a picture by calling it a love fest, it is pretty darn good.

He is getting along well at school (except for the many girls that keep batting their eyelashes at him) – ahem. There was an unfortunately incident where he accidentally agreed to “date” a girl who turned out to be bisexual – but it only lasted 1 day (when he found out about her past, he decided he wasn’t interested after all). I think there were some lessons learned there – and maybe it reinforced that fact that mom was right (about waiting to get involved with girls) – which was a good lesson.

Every day he is learning and taking in so much. He is both 5 and 25. Sometimes I forget how much he doesn’t know – and then he’ll say something and it’ll remind me that there is a whole aspect of life or living in the US that we haven’t even explored yet. My goal for the next month is to master the topic of money. ..speaking of which – he is a spender – the minute he gets money, he immediately wants to spend it. There are a billion lessons I feel like I need to teach him about money. From coins to gift cards to saving, to tithing, to giving, to spending wisely, to paying, to tipping – oiy! What other kids learn through osmosis – he needs to be taught.

His siblings are good. Last night I heard Amaya tell him she loves him – unprompted. It was heartening. Avery continues to be our focus child – of all the children he has had the biggest transition – going from only boy and oldest to not the only boy and not the oldest. He also has to share his room, his xbox, his tv, his attention, and oh – he’s turning 13 next month – probably the most hormonal/freaky age in the history of life. All in all, he’s doing well with the transition – he still plays the oldest child in so many ways – he takes responsibility for getting B up every day and getting him on the bus. The boys spend some time together, but for the most part – they do their own things. ..which is okay and probably not unlike other brothers who are 15 and 12.